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MARINA REBEKA

October 09, 2013

Biography

She is a star: Marina Rebeka, a handsome Latvian soprano making her Met debut. Her voice is bright and flexible

Manuela Hoelterhoff

Latvian soprano Marina Rebeka is one of the leading international sopranos of the younger generation, and her extraordinary vocal timbre and great acting skills have made her one of the most in demand sopranos of the world’s most important theaters.

Most recently, Marina made her Arena di Verona debut with a role debut as Juliette, and returned to the Vienna State Opera in September as Violetta. This summer she sang the role of Mathilde (Guillaume Tell) at the Rossini Opera Festival in a production of Graham Vick conducted by M. Mariotti. She also made her Bavarian State Opera debut as Violetta Valery in Verdi’s La Traviata in July and in April returned to La Scala to sing a Händel/Mozart concert program with the Orchestra Filarmonica della Scala (with conductor Ottavio Dantone). This May she performed the role of Donna Anna for her debut with Opernhaus Zürich.

In January 2013, Marina celebrated enormous success in a new Pierre Audi production of Rossini’s Guillaume Tell as Mathilde at the Nederlandse Opera in Amsterdam (cond. P. Carignani), and returned to the Vienna State Opera for Don Giovanni (Donna Anna). In the fall of 2012, she debuted with the Orchestra Sinfonica dell’Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia in Rome with Rossini’s Petite Messe Solennelle under the baton of Antonio Pappano, released in April 2013 on CD by EMI.

Future engagements include concert performances of La Traviata in Seoul in October, and Lyric Opera of Chicago debut with a new production of La Traviata. 2014 brings three role debuts with Leila in Bizet’s Les Pécheurs de perles, Fiordiligi in Mozart’s Così fan tutte at Opernhaus Zürich and Antonia in Offenbach’s Les contes d’Hoffmann at the Vienna State Opera. Marina will also make her debut at the Teatro dell’Opera in Rome in spring 2014 and return to the Deutsche Oper Berlin this season.

An active concert performer, Marina has been heard as the soprano soloist in Britten’s War Requiem and the Royal Scottish National Orchestra as well as with the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, Rossini’s Stabat Mater at Rossini Opera Festival of Pesaro, and Brahms’s Ein Deutsches Requiem with Latvian National Symphony Orchestra.

She has performed recitals of chamber music with Giulio Zappa in Rosenblatt Recital Series in London, Rossini Opera Festival, Pesaro, Rudolfinum in Prague, and opera aria recitals with Latvian National Symphony Orchestra and Latvian National Opera Orchestra. Marina’s international breakthrough performance occurred in 2009 at Salzburg Festival in a new production of Rossini’s Moïse et Pharaon (Anaï), under the baton of Riccardo Muti and staged by Jürgen Flimm. Since then, she has been a regular guest at the world’s most prestigious concert stages and opera houses, including the Metropolitan Opera and Carnegie Hall in New York, ROH Covent Garden in London, Vienna State Opera, Salzburg Festival, Teatro alla Scala, Deutsche Oper Berlin, Hamburg State Opera, Festspielhaus in Baden-Baden, Rossini Opera Festival di Pesaro, Maggio Musicale Fiorentino in Florence, and the Palau de les Arts in Valencia. Marina’s varied repertoire ranges from Mozart’s Don Giovanni(Donna Anna) and Idomeneo (Elettra), Händel’s Alcina (title role) and Teseo (Agilea), Rossini’s Moïse et Pharaon (Anaï), Guillaume Tell (Mathilde), Maometto II (Anna), Il viaggio a Reims (Contessa di Folleville, Madama Cortese) to Verdi’s La Traviata (Violetta), Bizet’s Carmen (Micaela), and Gounod’s Romeo et Juliette (Juliette).

Born in Riga, Marina began her musical studies in Latvia, and in 2007, graduated at the Conservatorio di Santa Cecilia in Rome. She also attended the the Internationale Sommerakademie Universität Mozarteum in Salzburg, where she studied with Grace Bumbry, and the Accademia Rossiniana in Pesaro under the guidance of Alberto Zedda. She is also the winner of various vocal competitions, among them the renowned Neue Stimmen Competition of the Bertelsmann Foundation in Gütersloh.